1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and image forming apparatus control method, program, and storage medium which can handle paper fingerprint information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Paper is made of plant fibers with a thickness of 20 to 30 microns. By entwining these, a random pattern is created. This random pattern is different paper by paper as in the case of fingerprints, and such a random pattern of paper is called paper fingerprint information.
The paper fingerprint information is different paper by paper, so that when “the original that I published is made of paper having this paper fingerprint information” is registered, it can be determined whether the paper is “original” or “fake” later. As a matter of course, “fake” includes “copy of the original.”
However, by using the technique of paper fingerprints, when paper fingerprints of pages of a paper document consisting of a plurality of pages are registered in advance and an attempt is made to prove the originality by comparing these with paper fingerprint information extracted from a paper document as a collating object, the following problem occurs. That is, this paper document is easily falsified and this falsification cannot be detected.
For example, when a page in this paper document was thrown away by a third party, it cannot be proved that the page was thrown away. When a third party added a new page created by the third party to the paper document which consists of a plurality of pages or replaced one page of the paper document with the new page, this addition or replacement cannot be proved.
In other words, in this technique of paper fingerprint information, although the originalities of pages can be proved, the originality as a whole of the paper document consisting of a plurality of pages cannot be proved.